


Hiraeth

by Queer_Trash_Queen



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/M, im sorry, this is v sad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-05-06 16:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5423207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queer_Trash_Queen/pseuds/Queer_Trash_Queen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The people they love keep dying and Beacon Hills feels like a graveyard to them and they're having some trouble keeping it together, that's all.</p>
<p>Or: Allison died in Scott's arms. Stiles dies in Lydia's. After, she dreams of swirling darkness and sharp blades that reflect light even when there isn't any and blood (so much blood) and yellow police tape and white sheets and blood curdling screams. She stops dreaming. She stops sleeping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pull the Bones From Their Sockets (please be soft while you do it)

**Author's Note:**

> Still unbeta-ed af but oh well

After Allison dies, Lydia completely expects everyone else's world to come to a screeching halt way the way hers has. The way that the whole pack’s has, really. But it doesn’t. In fact, shockingly little changes outside her world of tragedy and death and secrets and burdens too heavy for a seventeen year old girl to carry on her shoulders. 

 

They actually go to school the next day - another part of their charade, and though she isolates herself from the pack and tries desperately to clutch to her popular air head facade, even her teachers can tell something is off. When word begins spreading like wildfire at lunchtime that they found the Argent girl in her bedroom, blood on the sheets (not actually hers, Lydia knows, though she wishes she didn’t), knife protruding from her stomach, everyone stares at her. They whisper - barely - about how awful it is that she killed herself exactly the same way her mother did, and isn’t it ironic, isn’t it almost  _ poetic _ . Lydia wants to scream. She hates,  _ hates _ that all these unimportant strangers will never know that Allison died a hero, died protecting her friends and the values she so strongly believed in. She doesn’t want them thinking of her as a scared, sad coward.

 

Still, she acts surprised when a teacher pulls her out of class to gently break the news to her. She doesn’t have to pretend that her heart is being torn in two. That is maybe the only honest part of her whole day - collapsing in tears in the hallway, arms wrapped tight around own waist so that she doesn’t shatter into a million pieces. The few students linger in the hallway cast sidelong glances and in hushed voices confer amongst themselves as to whether or not that’s really  _ Lydia Martin _ in a heap on the floor outside AP Calculus. She may not be as popular as she once was, but people still see her as this empty headed, spoiled, callous bitch - albeit a crazy one who occasionally blacks out and runs through the woods half naked for a few days.

 

The teacher sends her home for the day, but she can’t bring herself to return home to an empty house just yet - hadn’t even gone home last night, just used the locker room showers and the spare change of clothes she keeps in her locker this morning. So she gets in her car and she drives, and she drives, and she distinctly does  _ not _ think about the last few weeks. She ends up at the reservation in front of the Hale house, and oh, isn’t it funny that she feels more at home here now than she does in her own big beautiful house. 

 

This very house that holds so very many awful memories of terror and violation, it has a very twisted place in her heart. It used to haunt her dreams, along with Peter. Lydia’s still not sure if she’s ever really been inside, or if it was all part of the vivid waking nightmare (a fugue, the doctors called it - if only they knew) she spent so long in. Sitting outside the house feels like facing an ugly part of herself. She was made here, or at least bits of her were. 

 

Still, she can’t quite bring herself to go inside, to see the familiar staircase and the big broken window in the empty living room. It used to be boarded up, but she half-remembers prying it open with her bare hands. Her fingernails were broken and bloody when she woke one morning, yet another souvenir of a night she can’t fully remember. The long scratches on the back of her hastily repainted bedroom door perfectly match her nails too, so maybe it’s not a real memory after all, just a fragment of a dream.

 

She knows this house as intimately as she should know herself, and yet she may have never actually been inside. Eventually, the light streaming into her window fades, and she notices her gas needle hovering dangerously close to empty. She drives away quickly, not anxious to spend another night in these woods ever again, even in the relative safety of her car.

 

When she pulls into her driveway, it’s unsurprisingly empty. Her mother is still away on a conference turned vacation, either trying desperately to fix her marriage or tangled in another torrid affair with a man half her age. She really doesn’t know why her parents pretend there’s even a sliver of hope for their marriage. It’s been on the rocks since Lydia started keeping both their affairs secrets as a little girl. Her whole life has been shrouded in lies for as long as she can remember. There wasn’t a single person who she was completely honest with...until Allison.

 

And now she’s back to lying to everyone around her again, lying about the biggest parts of her life - her best friend’s death, her true identity, the fact that humans aren’t the only evolved species on the planet. It seems a bit ridiculous, like something out of a cheesy novel when she actually stops to think about any of it, so she doesn’t. Instead, she unlocks the door, ignoring the echoing of all her movements in the dark and empty house. 

 

The very first thing she does is turn on all of the lights in the house, and all the TVs and radios. It sounds a bit silly, but the lights and the low background noise make her feel less alone, almost. The next thing she does is get out her sketchbook and a charcoal pencil and settle into her living room couch. Not many people know - actually, only one person knew, and now she’s dead - but Lydia likes to draw in her free time. When she’s not drawing terrifying magical trees over and over again without even knowing, she’s actually pretty good.

 

She sketches for a while, just a still life of the lamp in the corner, something boring and unassuming, something that can’t lead to thought of anything outside the eye in the center of the storm she’s created, sheltering her from the outside world. Her mother’s ringtone startles her out of her calm, and she has to scramble for her phone for a few minutes before finding it wedged in between the couch cushions. She picks up, breathless.

 

“Hello? Mother?” Lydia doesn’t mean to sound like a small child seeking her mother’s comfort, but she does. Her voice comes out small and unsure, and for a moment she’s sure her mother is going to hear the weight pressing on her from all sides, that she’s going to guess the secrets Lydia has been so desperately trying to keep. 

 

“Lydia? Hello, I uh- I can’t hear you very well here, terrible connection, so sorry.” Lydia wants to both breathe a sigh of relief and scream at her mother.  _ Can’t she tell? Can’t she hear that I need her? _

 

“It’s fine, mother,” Lydia says. (It’s not. It hasn’t been for a long while now.) “What is it?”

 

“Oh, well I heard about that Argent girl, and I thought that I just had to call. Isn’t the whole thing so awfully scandalous? Her family’s quite well known in some circles, did you know? And now first the mother, then the daughter -  in the exact same way… well it’s positively shocking. Wasn’t she in a few of your classes? I could swear you had her over once or twice for a group project or some such matter.”

 

Lydia wants to scream. She wants to cry. There is so, so much that she wants to tell her mother, wants to shout down the line that she doesn’t know  _ anything _ about Allison. She wants to tell her how brave, and kind, and beautiful, and strong her best friend was, that she didn’t kill herself but was murdered, that she died so that Lydia and their pack could live. 

 

Instead, she listens as her mother natters on a bit more about other unimportant matters. After a few minutes, she takes the phone away from her ear and sets it on the couch next to her and picks up her sketchbook again and continues trying to get the shading of the light just right. When she finishes her drawing, she glances over at her phone to see that her screen is dark. She picks it up again and unlocks it, sees that her mother stayed on the phone for a good fifteen minutes, chatting away to no one. It felt like more of an obligatory call and an excuse to gossip than anything else anyways. She also sees that it’s almost two am. Her recent call list is still pulled up, so she hits the first contact she sees that isn’t Allison.

 

Stiles’ phone rings several times before Lydia quickly hangs up. She forgot for a moment that she can’t talk to him right now. She doesn’t even know if Stiles is really Stiles right now. Her anchor is rusted, the links that once held them fast together weak and falling apart. She can feel herself beginning to float in the way that she did before she knew she was a banshee. That’s the last thing she needs right now, so she scrolls further down her contact list. The next number she dials picks up in two rings - she didn’t really expect him to be sleeping, but she also didn’t expect him to answer her call. She’d forgotten that she even had his number saved, to be completely honest.

 

“Isaac? It’s me. Lydia. No, no nothing’s wrong...not right now at least. I can’t… everything is wrong, and it’s two am on a Tuesday, and I can’t sleep, and I just really don’t want to be alone right now.” There’s no reply from the other end except steady breath. “Sorry, you probably didn’t want to hear any of that, sorry,” she says quickly. She puts on her best Lydia Martin voice, the one that’s light and chipper and has gotten her through four years of high school. “Anyways, I was wondering if you wanted to get some food? Maybe from that little diner off the highway.”

 

“Lydia, it’s oka-” he starts, and his voice sounds thick, like he’s been crying, or is right now, or is on the verge of. He sounds like she has since Allison died, and she had forgotten that he had begun to love her too.

 

“So, fries and maybe a milkshake? Pick me up in ten,” she cuts him off, Lydia Martin Is A-Okay voice still in full effect. Isaac sighs. “Great, see you then.” And then she hangs up, because she’s afraid of what she might say if she doesn’t, of what he might say. Honestly, she’s not even sure he’s going to show up, but she hopes he will.

 

Normally, ten minutes would  _ not _ be enough time for Lydia Martin to get ready - she  _ is _ the girl who had three outfit changes planned for her own birthday party after all - but she just does not have the energy to care tonight. Her best friend is dead, the boy she... has very mixed and confusing emotions for, but very distinctly does not love, thank you very much - is alive (barely) but was recently possessed and is dealing with that. Sweatpants, a hoodie that may and or may not belong to said boy, and the bags under her eyes are all she needs to binge eat at two am. 

 

When she hears a bike engine outside roughly fifteen minutes later, Lydia is both surprised and not. She flips her sketchbook closed and trades it for her keys and wallet, which she removes from her Coach bag and stuffs into the pocket on the front of her (Stiles’) hoodie. She leaves her phone on the couch and slides her feet into a comfortable pair of boots next to the front door. 

 

She leaves all the lights on and doesn’t lock the front door when she leaves. It’s November, and even sunny California gets cold in the winter, so she’s not all that surprised by the visible puff of air that follows her “Hey” like a shadow. Isaac doesn’t respond, just holds out a second helmet that she slips on. She throws one leg over the back of the bike and wraps her arms around Isaac’s waist, tight. It’s nice to feel the warmth of another person, even like this.

 

“Hold on tight, and lean into the turns with me,” Isaac warns before revving the engine and backing out of her driveway. Lydia rolls her eyes and doesn’t tell him that it isn’t her first time on a bike. If she thought it was cold before, it’s nothing compared to the way the wind bites at her exposed skin. Isaac may be supernaturally warm, but her hands feel frozen and her entire back is chilled. It reminds her of the way the ice water felt on her skin when she held Stiles under it, and the way it felt when she pulled him out and held on to him like she was never going to let go. 

 

It takes less than twenty minutes to reach the diner, but by the time they pull into a parking space, Lydia’s teeth are chattering. She climbs off the bike and pulls off her helmet, then shivers her way inside, trailing behind Isaac. While the too-tired looking waitress makes them wait to wipe down a table, Isaac wraps his arms around her. He still doesn’t say anything, just holds her for a moment so she can soak up his warmth and grit back tears. It’s been a long time since anyone held her in a non-life threatening situation without expecting something in return. When the waitress returns, she smiles softly at them. 

 

“Y’all make a nice couple,” she drawls, and neither of them have the energy to correct her. Lydia likes her accent, the way it draws vowels out into soft rolling hills and sounds like summer and sweet tea. She wonders if the girl came to California with big dreams, decides that she probably wanted to be a movie star, but the reality of Hollywood landed her here, in Beacon Hills, working the graveyard shift in a tiny diner. The waitress - her name tag reads “Amelia” - shows them to a booth up against the front window and sets two menus down on the table top. Lydia and Isaac slide into the booth on opposite sides. “Y’all just holler when you’re ready to order, okay? Can I getcha anything to drink while you wait?” Amelia asks kindly.

 

Lydia doesn’t say anything, is afraid to open her mouth and see what comes out - a banshee scream, or tears, or just a load of nonsense. Or maybe even worse, the truth. Luckily, Isaac seems to be aware that she’s barely holding it together. He smiles at the waitress and orders two milkshakes - one vanilla and one strawberry. Amelia scribbles this down and glides away towards the kitchen. Lydia opens her menu and pretends to browse. After a moment, she glances up at Isaac and catches him staring right back at her. 

 

“How did you know?” Lydia blurts. Isaac’s brow furrows. 

 

“Know what?” He asks.

 

“That I only like strawberry milkshakes. How did you know that?” He looks surprised, like he hadn’t even thought of that.

 

“I don’t know, I - I didn’t really think, I just ordered. I think, one time, we all went out to eat, and Scott tried to order you a chocolate milkshake, and Allison, she-” his voice thickens, like it’s hurting just to breathe. “She laughed at him, and she said that you only drank Strawberry milkshakes because you only eat pink ice cream… I think.”

Lydia remembers that night. Over the summer, the pack had all gone out after a long night of research. They’d come to this very diner, if memory serves correctly, and it does, because Lydia never forgets. Her eyes burn with unshed tears. She remembers the night she told Allison about her odd childhood phase of eating only pink foods, and how that carried over a bit into her teen years. They’d been curled together under her comforter, sharing stories and giggling like they were just two normal teenage girls. Her heart physically aches in her chest at the reminder of simpler times. 

 

“Yeah, I um, I remember that night. I didn’t think you would.” The patented Lydia Martin voice slowly slips away with every word until it’s just Lydia, sad and scared, raw and real. Isaac looks at her intently. His mouth opens, but whatever he was about to say next is interrupted but the waitress returning with their milkshakes.  She sets them down on the table with a smile, and asks if they’re ready to order. Honestly, Lydia hasn’t even looked at the menu, but on impulse, she orders curly fries and burgers for them both. She’s not quite sure why, but Isaac gives her a strange look. 

 

“Those are his favorite, you know,” he says, gesturing to her sweatshirt. She looks down, tugs at the hem of it a bit, takes in the way the white letters are peeling away from the maroon fabric.

 

“I know,” Lydia says. “You know, I called him first - before you I mean.” She sighs and shakes her head. “I only let it ring a few times before I hung up. I figured it wasn’t the best idea to see him right now. For both of us. He’s not my Stiles - I mean, the same Stiles as he was before.” She rushes, shaking her head. “He’s different now. Besides, when I think about the tunnels, and what happened down there… I mean, I know it wasn’t him in control,  **_it_ ** told me he wasn’t, but it was still  _ him _ , you know?”

 

Isaac doesn’t say anything, but he nods like he gets it. He reaches across the table and rests his hand on top of hers. The contact is pleasant, calming. She knows that he understands the loss she’s feeling, the great hole that’s been punched into her stomach and left an empty, swirling void where there used to be laughter and late night talks about trying to be a regular girl in the middle of this supernatural world they were thrust into. She can only imagine what it’s like for him. He loved her, he probably still loves her. And he had to watch her die in Scott’s arms. 

“Let’s not talk about them, okay? Let’s just eat our greasy food and talk about… something, I don’t know. I just want to be not-sad for a little while,” Lydia suggests. She’ll settle for not-sad, because she knows that it will be a while before either of them is ever really happy again. Isaac nods his agreement.

 

“I like that idea, actually. I haven’t been not sad in a long time. Let’s just be okay, just for an hour or two,” he says. Lydia smiles at him and he returns it, squeezes her hand. Amelia returns with a tray full of food and Isaac lets go of her hand. She places it on the table in front of them. She asks if they need anything else, and then disappears back into the kitchen. Lydia wonders absently if she’s the one who cooked their food. She and Isaac dig into their burgers and fries, eating in amiable silence for a while. 

 

“So,” he says, and wipes his mouth with a napkin.

 

“So…” she replies. She tries to look anywhere but at him. The salt shaker two tables over suddenly seems fascinating in the awkward silence hanging between them.

 

“You know, I’m not very good at this whole “okay” thing,” he laughs nervously. An almost hysterical giggle bubbles out of her.

 

“Me either. Maybe we should talk about the things we remember from the okay times,” she says. He chuckles and nods. “When I was really little, around seven or eight I think, my grandmother read me The Little mermaid. Not the Disney version, the original one where she has to choose between killing her prince or becoming seafoam. And after that, I wouldn’t let anyone call me anything but Ariel for like, a year. I actually had a costume that I wore for about three months after Halloween. I wore it to school and everything. Drove my parents crazy. But my grandmother loved it. She loved me.” 

 

She holds back the other part of that story, that the first day she wore the costume to school, all of her classmates had laughed at her but Stiles. He had looked at her in amazement and asked if she really was a mermaid, to which she haughtily replied “Of course.” And that day it was the beginning of the end for them, even if she didn’t know it then.

 

“When I was seven my mother died and my father locked me in the old freezer in the basement,” Isaac blurts. Lydia’s chest tightens. She’d known Isaac’s father used to hit him but this...this is unreal. She reaches across the table and takes his hand. “Sorry,” he says quickly. “I did tell you I’m not good at okay,” he smiles weakly.

 

“Isaac… I’m so sor-” she starts.

 

“Please don’t say you’re sorry,” he cuts her off. “I’ve hear that too many times. It’s done. It’s over. He’s dead, and I never have to see him again. Ever. It’s over.” Lydia squeezes his hand tightly.

“Maybe… maybe we should try not being us for a little while. We can pretend to be okay people. People who don’t know about werewolves, and who don’t literally leave trails of bodies, and have dead friends. Maybe that’s how we can be okay for a little while,” she suggests. 

“Yeah, okay,” Isaac says. They sit in silence for a minute. “So, if we’re these normal, okay people, what are our names? And what are we doing here at,” he checks his watch, “Three thirty in the morning on a school night?” Lydia smiles. She hums in thought for a moment then grins. 

 

“Well, my name is Ariel, of course.” She says coyly. 

“Of course,” he smiles, and it almost feels real. “What’s my name then?” Lydia thinks for a moment. 

 

“Christian,” she smiles. “After Hans Christian Anderson. He wrote The Little Mermaid. Or at least, my favorite version of it.” Isaac looks like he’s holding back a smile. “Alright then, we need to decide what  _ Ariel  _ and  _ Christian _ are doing way out here at this time of night - er morning.”

 

“Well,” Isaac begins, “That waitress thought we were, you know,  _ together _ . What if Ariel and Christian ran away together?” Lydia laughs.

 

“What, like to elope?” Isaac nods. Lydia laughs again. “Okay, if we’re going with that, then why did we have to run away to be together?” Isaac looks stumped for a moment. 

 

“Because… because my father, a CEO or something important like that, he didn’t want us to get married because… your father is a fisherman! And you know, like class difference, and all that. Money marries money to make more money.” He looks proud of his explanation, so Lydia doesn’t mention how close it is to the plot of The Little Mermaid. 

 

“Okay then,  _ Christian _ , are we already married or are we on our way?”

 

“Oh, we’re on our way, to Nevada from Washington, of course. But first we decided to see the golden coast,” he says, like it’s obvious. 

 

They continue on like that, swapping little imaginary details back and forth, until their food is long gone and poor Amelia looks about ready to kick them out. It’s only when the sun starts coming up that they realize how long they’ve been sitting there. It’s funny, Lydia thinks as they get up to pay their bill and leave. Two years ago, when he asked her out, she looked at Isaac Lahey like he was gum to be scraped off the bottom of her Miu Miu wedge sandals, and now she’s sitting in a diner with him in her pajamas all night, trying to forget the tragedy in their lives. 

 

Isaac signs the receipt  _ Christian Anderson _ and Lydia giggles at it the whole way out to the parking lot. The ride back to her house is a bit warmer with the sun on her back, but she’s still shivering when they pull up outside her house. When she looks at the house, all the lights and tvs on, glowing through the window, she can almost pretend that it looks lived in. The ache in her heart and her gut that had been numbed for a while returns with a vengeance when she slips off the bike and hands Isaac her helmet. She lingers for a moment, unsure what to say now that the sadness has settled back inside them both. She settles for kissing his cheek and mumbling “thank you” before dashing up the walkway into her house.

 

The door slams shut behind her and this time she locks it - locks herself in. The crushing weight of her reality settles back on her shoulders, and she feels like Atlas once again. Ariel stays outside on the curb, happy and normal and in love. She thinks maybe she carries one of those things inside with her, but she doesn’t have the time to stop and think about that, or about the boy who may or may not be in control of his own body. 

 

Instead, she kicks off her shoes and makes her way upstairs to her bedroom. She closes the door behind her, locks it, and wedges a chair underneath the handle for good measure. Then she checks that her windows are locked and draws the curtains, casting the room into total darkness. She switches on her bedside lamp before checking her closet and under her bed for monsters, like she used to make her father do when she was young, when they were still a family and she didn’t know that the monsters are very,  _ very _ real. She takes her stash of mountain ash out of her bedside table and sprinkles a line in front of her door and on her window sill. For good measure, she makes a circle around her bed as well. 

 

Only when Lydia is certain that she’s as protected as she can be - all circumstances considered - she climbs into bed, still fully clothed, and switches off her lamp. She lays on her back staring at the ceiling until soft morning light seeps through the gaps between her curtains, too terrified to close her eyes long enough to let her guard down. Sleep comes rarely and uneasily to her theses days, in fact it has since sophomore year and her horrifying Peter ordeal.

 

Her alarm blares from her phone exactly forty five minutes later 7:50 am, and she throws back the covers and lets her feet touch the cold hardwood floor. With a sigh, she begins her new morning ritual of sweeping up as much mountain ash as possible and dumping it back into the little sack Deaton gave her. Then she removes the chair and unlocks the door, peeking her head out into the hall to see if her mother had come home last night. Unsurprisingly, her mother’s door remains ajar, exactly the way it was when Lydia returned home in the early hours of the morning. 

 

Lydia returns to her room and eases her curtains all the way open, wincing at the bright sunlight. She decides to forego her usual carefully selected outfit and painstakingly applied makeup in favor of a twenty minute shower so hot her entire back is scalded a soft, rosy pink by the time she shuts off the water. When she steps out of the shower, the bathroom is filled with steam that reminds her of the mist swirling around her ankles when she visited the Hale house under Peter’s control. Shivering, she wraps herself in a purple fluffy towel and yanks a brush through her still dripping hair. 

 

Out of habit, she checks her phone to see if she has any new messages from Allison before remembering that she’ll never have any ever again. It feels like a weight on her chest, being forced to really acknowledge that she’s gone by the smallest of things. She does have new messages, though - about a dozen, in fact. They’re mostly from Scott, a few from Kira, and one from Isaac, that just reads  _ Meet at Derek’s ASAP. It’s about Stiles.  _

 

She doesn’t bother reading the rest, just tosses her phone onto her bed and pulls on a sweatshirt (one of Stiles’ she’s pretty sure) and her pajama bottoms. Lydia stuffs her phone into the sweatshirt pocket and slides her feet into some socks and the shower shoes she uses when she showers after swimming laps at the gym. Rushing down the stairs, she pauses to grab her keys from the coffee table where she left them early this morning. She likely breaks at least ten traffic laws speeding to Derek’s loft, but it’s all the way in the city and she doesn’t have time to sit in morning traffic, so she weaves in and out of cars. She’s sitting at an unavoidable red light when she realizes she forgot to put on a shirt, or even a bra underneath her sweatshirt. The light turns green before she has time to ponder what it means that she rushed out of the house so quickly for Stiles.

 

Lydia practically sprints up the stairs to Derek’s loft, and arrives at his front door flushed, frozen, and out of breath. She barely has time to knock on the door before Scott’s pulling it open and doing a double take at her disheveled appearance. Lydia scans the room and immediately locks eyes with Isaac. She can’t tell from his face whether the news about Stiles is good or bad, and her stomach twists and flips inside her.

 

“What’s wrong with Stiles?” She asks the room at large, though she doesn’t break eye contact with Isaac. “I got here as fast as I could after I saw the texts. What happened.” No one speaks for a painfully long moment, and Lydia is literally holding her breath in anticipation. Finally, Kira apprehensively opens her mouth. 

 

“We think -  _ I  _ think that I might have found a way we can kill the nogitsune and save him at the same time.” All of the air rushes out of Lydia and suddenly she’s feeling lightheaded. “It’s risky,” Kira rushes to continue. “But it just might work.”

Kira proceeds to explain that her family had been digging through her mother’s old things to find any bit of information on the Nogitsune that they could, when they’d found a scroll with vague and cryptically worded instructions for killing ancient spirits. It’s more than a little risky, it’s incredibly, stupidly, unbelievably dangerous for everyone involved. They have to somehow trap the Nogitsune, and to do that, they’ll have to find it.   Then Kira – and the ancient parchment unearthed from Kira’s mom’s things made it  _ very _ clear that it has to be Kira, something about lightning fox magic - the translation wasn’t exactly crystal clear – has to put her sword through the Nogitsune’s heart. That  _ should _ destroy the trickster spirit, but leave the host (Stiles) unharmed.  And after all that Stiles may not even survive the damage done to his body while possessed. 

  
Lydia has no idea how the hell they’re going to pull this off. All she knows is that they _have_ to. The thought of losing Stiles, especially after losing Allison, it does awful things to her insides. He’s her _anchor_ , her _everything_ , a moment of sanity in the absolute madness of their lives, even if she could never say that out loud. She can barely say it to herself, _fuck_. It took the threat of losing him forever to admit any kind of weakness in her impenetrable armor. If she loses this boy...she’s not sure she’ll be able to hold on to herself for much longer. She’ll be devastated. In fact, she’ll go out of her freaking mind.


	2. Peel Me Open Until I Am Nothing (but a whisper)

     Of course, Kira’s plan turns out to be more than a little tricky. They hadn’t expected trapping a thousand year old spirit to be easy, but they also hadn’t expected it to require a blood sacrifice. Of course Scott had immediately volunteered, but it has to be the blood of a someone who has a strong connection with the host body, and while Scott and Stiles are practically brothers, they gently remind him that Lydia is his anchor, and probably the best one for the job. They choose the school as the place where it will all go down, to give them the home field advantage. Derek and the twins will wait outside as backup if anything should go wrong. The rest of them will trap the Nogitsune inside, and Kira will kill it. Everything should go seamlessly. It doesn’t.  

     The day the pack is supposed to execute the plan, Aiden and Ethan are shot at in the woods by a hunter. Aiden is hit, but after Deaton cleans him up, he insists he can still help. Derek and Scott agree, but only because they need all the help they can get. So they hold a ritual, complete with creepy chanting and bloodshed. Lydia ends up with aching palms that will most likely need to be stitched up later, but otherwise everyone is fine.   

     Kira, Scott, Isaac, and Lydia have just the trapped Nogitsune when things begin to go wrong. Lydia can _feel_ that something’s not right, can feel the banshee wail building inside her, but she forces it down, because _no one else is supposed to die tonight_. When they hear Ethan’s heartbroken howl from outside, Scott looks torn. Kira and Isaac assure him that everything is under control. He gives Lydia a pained look before rushing outside. They watch him go, then turn back to face the Nogitsune and begin the second part of the ritual. Lydia tries her hardest not to stumble too much over the Japanese words that feel sharp and awkward on her tongue. She may be fluent in many languages, but Japanese definitely is not one of them.  

     Kira finishes her incantation first and raises her katana high to strike the Nogitsune down. In that very moment, in the split second between Kira bringing the glimmering blade up and swinging it down, Lydia knows that it won’t work. She can see it in the smirk on the dark spirit’s face just before Kira’s blade pierces it’s heart. The Nogitsune’s skin begins to crack in the most unnatural way, like stone splitting open during an earthquake. It struggles to stay upright as Kira bushes the blade even further into it’s chest. She tugs once, twice, and then finally pulls the blade out. it’s smeared with blood, human blood. The Nogitsune laughs, and then it crumbles into dust that blows away on an invisible wind and disappears into the cracks of the floor and the lockers.  

     They all look at each other in disbelief. Stiles is standing in front of them, blinking in confusion, and Lydia can tell that it’s really him because of the way he looks at her when he realizes where he is. It’s really him, he’s okay, and she has never been so glad in her life to be wrong. She practically falls over herself in her haste to throw her arms around his neck. He stumbles back, and the both of them nearly topple to the floor, but she still doesn’t let go. After a moment, he wraps his arms around her too, and Lydia cannot believe that everything actually worked for once. Everything except for the scream that has been building in her throat since they pulled up in front of the school. She’s broken from her daze by Kira’s hesitant voice. 

     “Is...is that it? We’re all still alive?” And Lydia knows that’s not true, because she _felt_ Aiden die outside, how could she not. She doesn’t get the chance to reply before the scream is bubbling up, fighting it’s way out. She clamps her jaw shut, doesn’t care if her throat bleeds and the blood vessels in her eyes burst. She will not let this one out. She will _not_ let him die. Not now.  

     “Yeah,” Isaac says breathlessly, like he can’t believe their plan actually worked. Neither of them see the terror in Lydia’s eyes. “I guess...I guess we are.” It all happens so fast after that. So goddamn fast. Stiles sags in Lydia’s arms, and she goes down with him. His head hits the floor with a sickening thud just as a scream rips it’s way out of Lydia’s throat, and she’s never screamed like this before, because under the banshee screech, her own terrified and heartbroken scream is audible. Her whole world just crumbled, and it took less than thirty seconds.  

     Lydia’s not even aware she’s still screaming until Isaac covers his ears. The banshee scream peters out and all that’s left is her normal voice, rough and raw, and she just keeps repeating the word “no” over and over. This wasn't supposed to happen. They were supposed to save him. Distantly, she can hear the voices that accompany all things banshee swirling, but for once, her own emotions are drowning them out. For the first time since she found out she was a banshee, the voices are completely and totally silent. She cradles Stiles’ face in the palms of her hands and the blood soaked bandages wrapped around them leave little smears of her blood on his cheeks. He’s still not moving. She shakes him a little, but he still doesn’t even flinch, and his skin is already cooling under her fingertips.  

     Lydia’s cries are loud and ugly and angry, and Isaac tries to pry her away from Stiles, but she can’t leave him yes, she just can’t, so she holds on so tight her arms begin to ache. She sobs when Isaac wraps his arms completely around her and tries to lift her up. Kira is beginning to panic, holding the katana up and looking back and forth between it and Stiles in horror. 

     “I don’t understand. I don’t understand why it didn’t work. This was supposed to fix everything. I didn’t mean to - I’m sorry! Just, just wait here, I’ll go get help. Just wait here, I’m so sorry.” She sprints down the hall out the double doors, shouting for Scott, for Derek. The doors slam shut behind her, but Lydia’s eyes never leave Stiles. His eyes are still open, staring blankly at her. Lydia can’t stand it, because she’s never seen his eyes so empty. They were always full of _something_ \- frustration, awe, fear, love. She loves him, she realizes. Maybe she has for a while. It’s just like her, to wait until it’s too late to do anything about it. 

     Lydia cries, and she shouts, and she _begs_ Stiles to come back to her, and she doesn’t care at all that Isaac is watching her meltdown. She’s still pleading with a dead boy when the doors bang open at the end of the hall. Startled, she jumps and whips her head around to see who it is. She crosses over into hysterical when she sees the sheriff striding towards them. When he Stiles on the ground half slung over her lad, he breaks into a run. Lydia looks away, unable to face the anguish on the sheriff’s face when he sees his son. The sound he lets out breaks her heart even further, if that’s even possible. She looks up at the sheriff through the tears in her eyes.  

     “I’m so sorry, I am so, so sorry,” she cries. She’s struggling to breathe between sobs now, but she has to let him know that if this could have ended any other way, she would have made it happen. “I love him. I love him, I’m so sorry. This wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. We were trying to save him, I’m so sorry. I love him,” she whimpers. The sheriff sinks to the floor next to her, and Lydia finally lets go of Stiles to curl her fingers tightly in the collar of his Beacon Hills PD jacket. He holds her tightly and whispers in her ear.  

     “I know, sweetheart, I know. I think…” he chokes up a bit, losing the composure he’s somehow kept thus far. “I think he knew too. He loved you. He’s always loved you.” Isaac backs slowly away to rush down the hall and out the doors to bring more people in to help them. Lydia and the sheriff hold each other until the rest of  Beacon Hills PD arrives at the scene. The halls of this school have seen so much tragedy in the past two years, more than any school should ever see, and yet the sight of Stiles sprawled in a pool of his blood - Lydia in the sheriff still clinging to each other kneeling in the pool of his blood - makes them stop dead in their tracks. One of them actually has to turn away and be sick, because if all the kids in their creepy, messed up town, they never expected Stiles Stilinski to end up on the list of bodies they’d have to clean up. 

     Parrish blatantly avoids looking at the body as he pushes the other officers and EMTs aside to gently pull Lydia away from the sheriff. He guides her down the hall, half carrying her because her legs refuse to work. They push through the double doors and out into the cool night. The fresh air is a shock to her lungs, and she wants more than anything to run back into the place she spends forty five suffocating hours a week if it means she can spend a few more precious seconds with Stiles. Melissa is waiting for them outside, frantically pacing in front of the caution tape now strung everywhere. Lydia can see the moment Melissa catches sight of her and the blood staining her clothes and face and hands, can the exact moment she realizes what happened, who still hasn’t emerged from the school. Melissa’s face crumples, and she tears down the crime scene tape before storming over to Parrish, shoving at him and angrily demanding to know what the hell is going on. She keeps pushing and pushing, until the sheriff comes out of the school behind them and she dissolves into tears. Stiles is - _was_ as much of a son to her as Scott is. 

     Lydia can’t bear to look at her anymore, so she directs her attention to the devastation around them. It’s chaos, police officers and medical personnel bustling around the rest of the pack, still frozen in various stages of shock and grief. She’d known on some level that Aiden was dead, how could she not, she had screamed for him too. But knowing and seeing are two very different things. She’s seeing the proof, she can’t deny it now. They’ve all obviously heard about Stiles too, judging by the way Scott is sitting on the ground, arms wrapped around his knees, sobbing. There are four police officers standing around him, and they seem to be trying to figure out whether they should interrogate him, arrest him, or send him to the hospital. There are ambulances and fire trucks and just about every squad car from BHPD parked haphazardly in front of the school, spilling on to the lacrosse field. People are rushing around like they don’t know what to tackle first. 

     There’s a commotion behind her and she turns around in time to see them wheeling Stiles out of the school on a stretcher. They’ve draped a white sheet over him, and the blood is already seeping through. She feels her legs give out, and she drops to the ground. No one notices her go down. All she can do is fold into herself and let all of her grief pour out. It feels as though there’s a thousand pound weight in her chest, like she’s drowning, like she’s buried alive and slowly suffocating. She can’t breathe, she can’t breathe, she can’t breathe, because Stiles is dead, he’s _dead_ , and now there’s no one to talk her down from her very own panic attack. She doesn’t think this feeling will ever go away. 

     It’s Isaac who finally hauls her to her feet and away from the scene of their crimes. Her knees buckle, and she lets herself slump into his chest. “No,” she weakly protests with what’s left of her voice. He just shakes his head and lets her lean into him, keeps one arm around her waist and the other firmly but gently cupping her elbow to keep her upright. He tries to hurry her past Ethan, Aiden, and Derek, but she suddenly finds her strength and pushes him away so that she can see. She deserves to see, to suffer for what she’s done. She knew that her friends were going to die, she felt it coming, but she didn’t stop it (couldn’t stop it) and so she deserves to see the wreckage.  

     Ethan is holding Aiden to his chest, rocking him back and forth like a child, but his twin is long gone. Black blood still dribbles from Aiden’s mouth, and he looks younger and more human than Lydia has ever seen him. She may not have been in love with him, but she had some feelings for him besides their occasional hook ups. She’d been trying to keep her distance because the last boy she’d cared for had ended up so damaged he had to leave the country, but they’d ended up here anyways. She’s about to turn away when Derek glances up and meets her gaze. He looks so very lost, like for the first time in his life he didn’t have a backup plan, wasn’t prepared for this loss. Lydia knows he was never fond of the twins, but still he took them in, and let them into his pack, however briefly. And Stiles… he was like his (very annoying) kid brother. Losing a pack member is possibly the worst feeling in the world even for her as a - mostly - human. She can’t imagine how it feels for someone with heightened senses like Derek. And now, losing three within weeks of each other, especially for someone who’s lost their entire family, well it’s got to be devastating. 

     Lydia’s breath catches in her throat again, and she can feel herself beginning into another panic attack. Isaac takes her arm once more and tugs her away towards the parking lot. She barely feels her legs wobble before he’s sliding an arm underneath her knees and scooping her up. She’d read somewhere in one of Deaton’s ancient, dusty, animal skin bound tomes that a werewolf’s sense of smell is so highly developed that they can smell emotions, and that the “darker” range of emotions tends to carry a sharp unpleasant smell. She must be positively pungent to Isaac right now.  

: .: 

     Isaac eases her into the back seat of Derek’s car, having ridden his bike to the school, and fairly confident that Lydia isn’t capable of riding on the back of it in her current state. He has to buckle her in like a child, because she can’t move. She feels paralyzed with all that’s weighing on her. On the upside, she’s not crying anymore. Instead, she stares out the window and tries to suffocate the voices in her head that have begun to stir once more.  

     When they pull up in front of her house, all the lights are still off. Her mother is most likely still away at a “conference” - i.e. relaxing in the sun on a tropical island, most likely with her latest sidepiece. Isaac doesn’t bother asking if she can walk, just carries her all the way to her front door, only setting her down long enough to retrieve the spare key from under the door mat. Lydia directs him up the stairs to her bedroom, and it’s so odd to think that the last time he was in her house, she knew nothing about the supernatural and he was trying to kill her. Everything she knows has changed since last year.  

     Isaac gingerly sets her down on the edge of her bed. He moves to leave, but she grips the sleeve of his sweater between her cold fingertips and whispers, “Stay.” She can’t be alone with the voices tonight. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to be alone with the voices after what she saw tonight. It’s so awful, to always have them in her head, whisper-roaring about death and dying, and she can’t control it, has no say in the matter. Sometimes, when she’s distracted though, they’re quiet - not gone, but not quite so deafening. If she didn’t know that she was a banshee, she would think she was insane, all these voices in her head that are not her own. But she does know, and so she needs someone, anyone, to keep her company and the whispers at bay. 

     He toes off his shoes and hesitantly sits next to her, perched tensely on the edge of the bed, ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. Lydia wonders if this is because of tonight’s events, or if it is the result of years of living under the same roof as his father. She guesses that it is a combination of the two. Sighing heavily, she puts her hands on his shoulders and presses gently until they’re both lying side by side on their backs. In the quiet dark of her room, she hears him begin to cry softly. After a few moments, he turns over onto his side, facing away from her. She wriggles closer, until she’s pressed up against his back and slowly slides her arm over his chest, both surprised and not at all to find his hands already clutched together there. He unclasps his fingers and slides them into hers. Lydia feels his shuddery breaths slowly even out and deepen, until they become soft snores and the last bit of tension finally seeps from his body. 

     Lydia lies awake holding him and ignoring the rushing sounds of unfamiliar voices echoing until the sun begins to peek over the edge of her windowsill. Only when the first rays of morning light shine through her window onto the end of her bed does the murmuring quiet enough for her to slip into unconsciousness. 

 **:.:**  

     The afternoon sun peeking through her bedroom window wakes Lydia only a few hours after she had finally fallen asleep. The sun sits high in the sky now, scattering light and warmth into her room and chasing away the chill that has clung to her bones since this whole mess started for her on the lacrosse field. It takes her a moment to realize that she is alone, and another moment to realize that she didn’t fall asleep that way. She had fallen asleep curled around another warm body, but now the sheets against her cheek are cold. Isaac is gone. He’s left her, just like everyone else important to her. 

     She can feel herself slipping into a downward spiral, but she doesn’t care anymore. It’s not like there’s anyone left to hurt but herself. A tiny voice that sounds an awful lot like Peter’s whisper in the back of her mind. _What did you expect? You’re a cold, miserable bitch with baggage to spare_. She is filled with a sudden fury that pushes away the grief temporarily, so she lets it overwhelm her. She slides off her bed and yanks her curtains open all the way. 

     Lydia begins pulling open drawers, throwing clothes and other assorted items across the room towards her bed. She feels a bit like a whirlwind as she yanks her suitcase from the top shelf of her closet and begins tossing things into it. She accidentally knocks over everything on her dresser and vanity, throws several bottles of nail polish over her shoulder as she sorts through what’s absolutely necessary. The picture frames on her vanity catch her eyes, and she slams them all down, shattering the glass in quite a few of them.  

     She has no idea where she’s going to go, no plan for her escape, only knows that she has to get as far away from Beacon Hills as possible. Far, far away from this godforsaken town, and all the people in it, and all of the incredible sadness that seems to linger everywhere she goes. She’s in the process of retrieving her duffle bag from under her bed when her bedroom door swings open. Her first instinct is to grab the nearest heavy object and haul it towards the door, panic rising in her chest until she sees Isaac easily dodge one of her books on harmonic analysis. He closes the door behind him, silently surveying the damage. The tension slowly leaves her body and she stands from her crouch behind her bed. 

     Isaac doesn’t say a word as he steps through the wreckage she’s created. Gently, he takes her duffle bag from her stiff, shaking fingers. He holds her hand by the wrists, and she’s not sure why until she glances down and sees the blood. She must have cut her hands on one of the picture frames. Isaac deftly plucks the shards of glass from her palms and wraps them in a t shirt he finds flung over her vanity mirror. Lydia chokes on her sob when she sees that it’s one of Stile’ lacrosse shirts. Isaac still hasn’t said anything, and when she looks up at him, he’s very pointedly not looking at her face. 

     “I have to get out of here. I can’t stay here for another second. I have to go,” she heaves, still slightly out of breath from her little hurricane of destruction and her moment of panic. He looks hurt, and a bit confused, and she consider for the first time that maybe everyone he loves leaves too. Maybe they’re even more alike than she thought. “I can’t… I can’t be here when they’re not.” He nods, letting go of her wrists, and steps back. 

     “I get it. It’s okay. Go.” He sounds beaten down and broken, like he’s given up. She can’t just leave him here with the very things she’s running from.  

     “Come with me,” she blurts. “I know you can’t stand it here either. Let’s go somewhere. Today. We can get out of here and go as far away as possible. Isaac looks as surprised as she feels. “I mean it. You don’t even have to pack anything. We’ll just buy new things when we get to wherever it is we go.” He looks doubtful, like maybe she’s finally lost it completely. 

     “And just how do you plan to pay for all of this?” She knows this trick. He’s trying to reason her out of it. Has he forgotten that he’s talking to Lydia Martin (or at least what’s left of her)? Once she makes up her mind she can’t be persuaded.  

     “Emergency stash. Monthly allowance. Daddy’s gold Amex.” She ticks them off on her fingers as she goes. “When I want something, I figure out how to get it. We’re going.” Isaac still looks at her doubtfully, but she knows this is something the both of them need to do if they want any chance of getting through the next few days, let alone the next few weeks. They both need to go someplace where their lives aren’t in danger every day, where they aren’t known as the kids surrounded by death. Somewhere they can just exist, and grieve in peace without all of Beacon Hills breathing down their necks. And if she can do that for him, she will.  

     “Okay,” he says. “Okay, I’ll come with you.” 

 **:.:**  

     It takes Lydia less than three hours to set the whole thing up. Initially, she’d started booking flights to France, because like every other teenage girl, she’s always wanted to see Paris. After Allison’s brief exile there, she had promised Lydia they’d see it together some day. That will never happen now. France would just feel wrong without Allison, so she cancels those tickets and settles on Italy. Her parents have a vacation villa there, nestled along the coast. It has plenty of rooms and more than enough privacy for the two of them. It also puts approximately 6,200 miles between them and Beacon Hills.  

     They’ll have to take a cab to the LAX because they’re getting on an international flight, and the nearest airport to Beacon Hills only flies intranational. Their flight departs at 11:25 a.m. with two layovers before they finally touch down in Rome around 10:37 p.m. Once they get through customs and find a cab, she figures it will be at least a three hour ride to the little coast town the villa is in. In total, they’ll be traveling for approximately twenty nine hours, but at the end of that long stretch they’ll finally be able to find some peace.  

     The premium business class tickets she books are one way only.  

 


	3. For I Am Fragile (and vacant)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooo it's been a hot minute since I updated this, sorry. Real life once again intervened. Still no beta, so if ya see any gross errors feel free to lmk

They end up with a carry-on bag worth of things each - Isaac leaves to sneak into Scott’s house and pack and returns within the hour. Lydia packs one change of clothes, her wallet, and her passport. She uses her father’s connections to obtain a passport for Isaac and arranges for it to be waiting for them at the airport. At the last second she decides to pack her cell phone, just in case. Isaac stows his away in one of her vanity drawers. 

 

The cab to LAX arrives around midnight and they both clamber into the back seat dreading the five hour drive. Isaac dozes on her shoulder most of the way, but she can’t sleep a wink. Every time she closes her eyes she sees swirling darkness and sharp blades that reflect light even where there isn’t any and blood soaked sheets and yellow police tape and she can hear her own blood curdling scream.

 

When they finally pull into the drop off zone at LAX she has to nudge Isaac awake. The sun is doing it’s best to shine through the smog as it rises above the city. They stretch their exhausted bodies before linking hands and shouldering their bags. According to Lydia’s itinerary they have roughly an hour and a half to get breakfast and go through security. Isaac’s eyes are still half closed when she drags him inside the bustling airport. She sends him upstairs to get breakfast from a coffee shop while she retrieves his passport from the customer service desk. He returns with an extra large coffee for her and three donuts for himself that he practically inhales on the way up to the security line. Lydia sips her coffee as they join the line and stand too close together for platonic friends. 

 

Anyone watching them would think they’re a couple, maybe a pair of tired college students visiting home, or world travelers on a layover in their adventure. No one would ever suspect the truth - two broken kids, one werewolf and one banshee, running away together to escape the supernatural hell they lived in. Sometimes even Lydia finds it hard to believe. After all, she spent most of her life believing that not only were humans the only intelligent species, but that she herself was human.

 

They clear security no problem, but Lydia still hold her breath as they go through customs. Isaac’s passport, while technically legal, was a rushed job. The woman behind the desk barely glances at their passports before waving them through. It takes fifteen minutes to reach their terminal, and they arrive just as the overhead speakers call for priority boarding. 

 

The flight is long and silent. Neither of them says a word save when the flight attendant asks if they’d like any refreshments. Isaac asks for a glass of orange juice, and his voice sounds rough with disuse, probably having spoken less than a hundred words in the last two days. They don’t bother trying to sleep on the first four hour part of their flight, instead they take turns flipping through skymall and the various safety brochures. When the plane touches down in Chicago, they file off the plane with everyone else and squint into the afternoon sunlight flooding O’Hare.

 

They have four hours to kill while they wait for their next flight, so they spend time exploring the airport, visiting the shops, even eating lunch in one of the nicer restaurants. When they finally board their connecting plane to Dublin, they can barely keep their eyes open. Lydia collapses into her seat and immediately reclines it. Isaac asks a flight attendant for blankets and drapes one over Lydia as she struggles to stay awake. Of course, she has to return her seat “to the upright position” for take off, which delays her falling asleep. The plane takes off as the sun is setting, and as soon as they reach cruising altitude, Lydia reclines her seat and both she and Isaac pass out.

 

A flight attendant wakes them shortly before touchdown in Dublin, the sun just beginning to rise above the clouds outside their windows. The layover is short this time, just an hour and a half. They eat breakfast at McDonalds, the only familiar restaurant they can find, before rushing back to their departure gate. They only just make it in time for final boarding. There’s roughly three hours until they reach Rome and Isaac decides to spend that time sleeping. Lydia watches him for a while, surprised at just how young he looks without the weight of the world on his shoulders. 

 

When there’s forty five minutes until landing, she nudges Isaac awake to try and push away a bit of the aloneness that she’s feeling, even on a plane full of people. Not one of them could come even close to understanding the things that she’s feeling right now. Isaac can, even if they choose not to speak about it. He wakes with a start, eyes bright yellow for a moment before he remembers where they are. He exhales heavily and and takes Lydia’s hand. She squeezes gently and doesn’t let go until touchdown.

 

The groundskeeper of her parent’s villa meets them at baggage claim with a small handwritten sign that reads  _ Mr. and Mrs. Martin _ . He helps them load their few things into the trunk of his tiny car, chatting idly with Lydia in Italian as Isaac stares in befuddlement. They squeeze themselves into the smallest back seat either of them has ever seen, which involves a lot of swearing and heads bumping. Eventually they’re able to settle in and buckle up, albeit pressed against each other with their legs tangled. Isaac turns to her, and they’re squished to tightly together that his lips just barely brush the shell of her ear.

“I didn’t know you could speak Italian,” he murmurs. She shrugs. There’s a lot that he - that no one - knows about her. She’s Lydia Martin, she’s always got to have a secret up her sleeve to keep surprising everyone who underestimates her.

“Actually, I speak fourteen languages. Twelve, technically. No one speaks Latin or Archaic Latin anymore.” Isaac gapes at her with the same kind of amazement that Stiles used to, and it presses the breath from her lungs. It suddenly feels as though there is a thousand pound weight sitting on her chest crushing her.  She curls her fingers into the sleeve of Isaac’s sweatshirt and forces herself to breathe deeply before she has a total meltdown in the back of a stranger's car. He gives her a concerned look and wiggles an arm free to wrap it around her. Right there, in the back of the world’s smallest car, Isaac is her anchor, even for the briefest second. Lydia leans further into him and gives a weak smile.

 

“Sorry. Sorry, I’m alright. It’s just.. That’s the same look that -” her voice breaks and Isaac nods. She knows that he understands, isn’t just trying to force his pity on her. 

 

“Lydia, it’s okay for you to grieve them you know. You have the right to feel this way, after everything.” She nods, even though she doesn’t agree with him, even though  _ sad _ doesn’t begin to touch what she’s feeling. A few better words could be guilt, remorse, anguish. She feels responsible for their friends’ deaths because she  _ is _ responsible, in a way. And besides, Isaac has lost infinitely more than her. His mother, his brother, his father, even Derek in a strange way...and then Allison.

 

She’s lost two people, maybe three if one stretched and included Aiden. A best friend she’s known for a little over a year, and a boy she’d known since kindergarten, who’d been in love with her for as long as she could remember. She’d never even told him she’d loved him - she’s not even sure if she did. But this one boy, regardless of exactly how she felt about him, he apparently had the power to break her completely and show everyone just how weak she is.

 

/:/

Isaac stares out the window in awe as they approach the city of Amalfi. They descend through the mountains on the most terrifying road either of them has ever seen, and Lydia almost wants to laugh at the way Isaac essentially holds his breath the entire way to the small coastal town. Despite having visited several times throughout her childhood, the beauty of the coast - the mountains, the cliffs, the sparkling mediterranean five hundred feet below them. All these years later, and it still steals her breath away. She remembers staring down into the water when she was little and trying to spot the mermaids she was  _ convinced _ played just beneath the surface. 

“You know,” she muses, tearing Isaac away from the window, “I haven’t been here since I was about nine years old. And I swear, not a thing has changed. It’s exactly how I remember it.” She vaguely recalls her family’s last trip here - it had ended a week early because of her parent’s fighting. “Oh, look there! That’s our villa. It’s called Villa del Sirena. It means “The Mermaid’s Villa.” What? 

Don’t laugh, I was like four when my parents let me name it!” Isaac continues laughing, even as Lydia tries to fix him with her best patented Lydia Martin stare. “Alright, alright it is a bit funny,” she concedes.

 

The house is breathtaking, all jokes aside. It’s set into the cliffs high above the bustling city. It’s a towering three stories, with five living spaces, eleven bedrooms, nine bathrooms, and an enormous kitchen. Four of the eleven bedrooms have balconies, and there’s a back porch that connects to the kitchen veranda. Lydia can’t believe she’d forgotten how much she loved this place as a child. 

 

When they finally arrive at the villa, the groundskeeper hands her the keys offers to help with their bags - all two of them. Lydia politely declines and shoulders her bag herself. Isaac slings his backpack over his shoulder, gripping the strap tightly. She generously tips the groundskeeper and takes Isaac’s hand to lead him up the steep stone steps to the front door. The key slides easily into the lock, but the door sticks and Isaac has to use a little of his supernatural strength to get it open. It hasn’t been opened since her family’s last vacation here, when her parent’s marriage was just beginning to crumble but before they stopped taking family vacations. The cleaning crew she hired to come uncover the furniture, dust, and stock the fridge used the back entrance and are probably the only ones to enter the house in the last seven or so years.

 

Lydia takes her time showing Isaac around the villa, playing hostess like she used to at parties and events. Eventually, though, he’s seen all there is to see, and they’re left standing in a spare bedroom in awkward silence. He clears his throat softly, eyes glued to the floor. In all the adrenaline of their midnight escape and the beauty of the Italian coast, they’d escaped from the crushing sadness resettling into their bones. 

 

“Well, um, I guess I’m going to go take a shower and change out of these clothes. You can choose any bedroom you’d like. Mine’s on the top floor, so… I’ll be up there if you need me.” Isaac gives her a weak smile, and she turns and hurries to her childhood room. The last twenty four hours are finally catching up to her, but she doesn’t want Isaac to see her lose it. She makes sure to lock the door behind her, before letting out a deep breath. Her throat is starting to ache from holding back the tears that are starting to fill her eyes but Lydia’s not quite ready to let them fall yet. 

 

Lydia makes her way to the bathroom, closing and locking that door too. She turns on the taps on the freestanding tub in the middle of the room, smiling faintly at the mermaid tails that the feet end in instead of claws. The whole bathroom is bedecked in mermaids and other sea creatures. She’d almost forgotten just how much she loved the Little Mermaid as a young girl. A few minutes of searching the various cabinets and drawers turns up an old bottle of strawberry scented bubble bath. She pours it into the tub and waits for it to finish filling. When the water is nearly spilling over the edge, steam curling into the air, Lydia sheds her clothes and sinks into the bubbles. 

 

Now that she’s finally alone, she allows herself to feel everything she’s been pushing away. Alone in her bathroom, Lydia Martin cries until all the bubbles are gone and the water is as cold as Stiles’ skin felt last night in the school hallway. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, hope you didn't hate it:) If you're going to comment pls be gentle I am just a very broke college student who misses Isaac Lahey v much.


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